Almost 10% of Cancer Survivors Still Smoke: Study

83% of those who keep puffing away smoke an average 15 cigarettes daily

(Newser)
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It's been well documented how smoking wreaks havoc on your body, with tobacco use upping the risk for a variety of cancers—lung, bladder, esophagus, larynx, pancreas, and more—and causing almost one in five deaths in the US and 30% of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Yet a new study finds that nearly one in 10 people who've beaten cancer continue to light up—either because their addiction is too strong or perhaps because they don't know enough about treatment plans that could help them quit, researchers theorize.

Almost 3,000 cancer survivors who had made it nine years past their original diagnosis were surveyed for the study, published today in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. The heaviest smoking rates were found in people who had cancers "strongly linked to smoking," USA Today reports: While the smoking rate among cancer survivors overall was 9.3%—still half that of the general population—people who had fought bladder and lung cancer still puffed away at the more alarming rates of 17.2% and 14.9%, respectively. And those survivors who do smoke go big, with 83% of them plowing through an average of 15 cigarettes daily—and 10% saying they're not going to quit. (Thanks in part to smoking, cancer cases are expected to jump 50% by 2030.)

Every day I pass by our hospital and observe patients standing on the sidewalk with their IV tubes and their cigarettes. It is kind of like the motorcyclists who chose to not wear helmets. They are free. Their choice. But the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for their medical expenses. They should have to pay much higher insurance rates or not be covered.

Box1Car

Aug 7, 2014 12:55 AM CDT

The REAL poison in tobacco is Arsenate of Lead w/traces of Polonium 84 from decay
process creating the lead. For 3 centuries tobacco fields used Arsenate of Lead as an insecticide so now whole counties of tobacco fields are unfit for growing anything BUT tobacco> gov't decided to keep growing tobacco as the plants would suck the poison out of the fields so in the future we'd have viable farmland, but for now smokers are going to die from nicotine & tar anyway, so who cares? As for MJ plants they use conventional insecticides derived from oil, NO Radioactivity involved. What's PO84?
an element that decays radioactively to emit alpha particles which are deadly IF in contact w/human tissue (like LUNGs) Its what the KGB used to kill spys as it is non detectable if the spy was a smoker. So if you want to kill yourself, just spark up a cig, it'll eventually do the job> PS a radiologist can tell from X-ray if you're a smoker because
Polonium 84 will "FOG THE PLATES" and LEAD coating will cloud the lung tissue

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